Feminine gamification viewpoint: reflections from a host

It has been an amazing and exhausting full-on few days at the Gamfication World Congress in Madrid. #GWC16

I knew when accepting the challenge of hosting the whole event, I was in for a whole new level of engagement with the industry.  I had never up until then hosted a full day event of this magnitude. It is one thing to share your knowledge as a speaker or a workshops leader, but it requires a whole other level of energy and focus to run a whole day.

It was fun to meet all the speakers and have fun while they were getting ready. Unfortunately I will have to wait to see the videos when they come out, to see what was said. I always love learning from others and I have to say I definitely missed out on that part this time around. I learned first hand how intense it get’s when running parallel stages with multiple people as well as keeping attention and energy level high enough for people to take in new information.

It’s interesting how speakers go from nervous and excited before they start to relaxed and happy after they come off stage. the difference is amazing. The more often they have spoken the easier it becomes, I would say practise definitely helps with managing the nerves and emotional roller coaster.

It was great to see Andrzej Marczewski, who I hired to join Gamification Nation in August this year thanks to the fast growth of my business, win the contribution to the industry award. We were both nominated in the top 5 shortlist together with Kevin Werbach, Yukai Chou and Pete Jenkins, who are all amazing contributors in their own right. Andrzej won the recognition based on his work with player types and the fact that the questionnaire on player profiles was also validated by researchers in the academic world.

From my perspective as the employer, I am delighted and mega proud. I have been using Andrzej’s profiles for years and they have served my clients very well and I am sure they will continue to do so going forward. It was also fab to have a flavour of the gender and age dynamics from the player profiles for my workshop on inclusive gamification design with persona’s.

I am glad the whole event went superbly well, with some minor in the moment errors and glitches, which we tried to cover up as well as possible. I am proud and delighted that Andrzej won the contribution and I now have the gamification guru of 2016 working for Gamification Nation. I hope to be back next year, but the hosting I will happily delegate to a new host.

Thank you to my co-host Melanie De La Vega from Pernod-Ricard to make the day smooth and for the small but amazing team behind GWC (Sergio, Jose, Natalia and co) to make this event better and better every year. Great to meet many old and new friends, I couldn’t meet all of you personally this year, but your friendly and amazing support was just awesome! It was an honour, fun and now I am off for a bit of rest 🙂